Boring, complex and important: a recipe for the web's dire future

How the final frontier just got democratised

This article was first published in the June 2015 issue of WIRED magazine. Be the first to read WIRED's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online

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In the past two decades, private businesses have begun to compete with government-run space programmes. Not all efforts are on the billion-dollar scale of SpaceX or Virgin Galactic, however. Viable projects with budgets in the millions -- sometimes much less -- are achieving results that once required government coffers and buildings full of engineers. "It's definitely a fascinating time to be living in terms of space exploration," says Ariel Waldman, a member of the National Academy of Sciences' Committee on Human Spaceflight and founder of Spacehack.org, which collates crowd-sourced space-research projects. Thanks to new technologies, ever-cheaper components and online collaboration and funding, small-scale space exploration is going big.

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ByAbigail Beall

Like just about every new transportation technology, spaceflight's roots are definitively DIY. In the 20s Robert H Goddard endured ridicule and doubt as he invented the liquid-fuelled rocket engine virtually singlehandedly. The first high-altitude pressure suits in the 30s were low-budget Frankenstein affairs of rubberised fabric and pigskin gloves. During the construction of the engine for the Bell X-1, the first plane to break the sound barrier, US Air Force engineers repurposed parts such as boiler valves to save time and money. They ended up with "a big fantastic piece of junk that you'd suspect might belong on a tractor," one wrote. "But we made it work."

By 1966, the height of the space race, Nasa's funding had grown to 4.41 per cent of the US budget. Half a century later, with the Space Shuttle mothballed and the future of the International Space Station in doubt, that amount has shrunk to less than 0.5 per cent. The largest private space-flight efforts each have their own billionaire backers and budgets to match: Elon Musk's SpaceX, Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic, Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin. Even the non-profit Mars One will need an estimated $6 billion (£3.86 billion) to make a one-way trip to the red planet.

It's definitely a fascinating time to be living in terms of space explorationAriel Waldman, Spacehack.org

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At the same time, microsatellites have slashed the costs of launching hardware into orbit by using open-source or off-the-shelf components and piggybacking on larger payloads. CubeSats, ten-centimetre cubes weighing about one kilo, cost roughly $50,000 to build and $100,000 to launch, which puts them within budgetary reach of universities and small companies. Don't need a whole kilo? Postage-stamp-sized picosatellites and femto-satellites (under 100g) offer even smaller options. Amateur and academic rocketry groups are now designing, building and launching craft into the stratosphere.

Sarah Sharp

When Charles Lindbergh climbed into the cockpit of the Spirit of St Louis in the early morning of May 20, 1927, he was driven by more than the challenge of making the first solo non-stop flight across the Atlantic. There was also the $25,000 prize offered by New York hotelier Raymond Orteig designed to spur development in the nascent field of commercial aviation. The modern equivalent, the $10 million Ansari XPRIZE, was won by Mojave Aerospace Ventures' SpaceShipOne when it made the first manned private space flight in 2004. The next low-cost space race is headed even higher thanks to the Google Lunar XPRIZE, a $30 million competition to put a privately funded robot on the Moon. The winning design will have to move 500 metres across the surface and send back high-definition images as proof.

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Watch live as Nasa's Cassini mission comes to an epic end

ByMatt Burgess

In October 2014, an unmanned Antares rocket owned by US-based Orbital Sciences exploded during lift-off in Virginia. Its Cygnus spacecraft and over 2,200 kilograms of cargo meant for the International Space Station went up in a fireball that broke windows up to ten kilometres away. Three days later Virgin Galactic, which just five months earlier had won US government approval for commercial launches, had its SpaceShipTwo crash in the Mojave desert, killing a test pilot and casting the programme's future into serious doubt.

A blood oxygen, pulse and breathing monitor

Terry Manier

Whatever path spaceflight follows, says Waldman, private, small-scale projects will probably play a significant role. Nowadays, 3D printing is just starting to become a viable technology for rocket parts. In October 2013, engineering students at the University of California San Diego successfully tested an 18cm-long liquid-fuel engine printed out of a chromium-cobalt alloy, the first such test outside Nasa. This year a team from the University of Victoria won first prize in a $10,000 competition to create an open-source 3D-printed rocket engine sponsored by the low-cost space-exploration company DIY Rockets.

Waldman, a former Nasa programme coordinator, founded Spacehack.org to let anyone participate in space exploration and scientific discovery, for example by mapping global light pollution using photos from the ISS or helping to identify asteroids that could hit Earth. When it comes to private space flight, "it's not easy to tell what's crazy or not yet," Waldman says. "At first glance, something that sounds crazy can be really credible, and vice versa."

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15 items

Cameron Smith, USA

Cameron Smith, USA

Terry Manier

Visitors to the trendy Pearl district of downtown Portland, Oregon, have often caught sight, through the open door of a ground-floor apartment, of what looks alarmingly like a homemade spacesuit. Since 2009, Cameron Smith, an anthropology professor at Portland State University, has been building his own suborbital spacesuit in his living room -- from scratch.

With the help of a self-taught team of undergrads and graduate students, Smith has created three prototypes out of repurposed parts, ranging from an old diving drysuit and a piece of a pie dish to a bright orange Soviet Air Force helmet he found for $400 on eBay. The receipts total somewhere around $5,000, compared to ten or a hundred times that for an off-the-rack pressure suit. The prototypes have undergone thorough testing in various environments, including high-altitude chambers, cold-storage lockers and swimming pools.

Smith's ultimate goal is the Armstrong line, the point, at 19,000 metres, where water boils at body temperature and humans are unable to exist unless they're in a pressurised environment. "The moment you talk to an engineer, their eyes pop out," he says. "But you have to remember the history of pressure suits goes back to the 30s, with almost nobody killed."

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Smith's fascination with space started in childhood, when he wrote to every American astronaut and a few cosmonauts asking how he could follow in their footsteps. The years he spent climbing mountains and trekking solo across the Arctic were useful when designing a suit to survive in space, where attention to detail and safety have similar life-or-death consequences. He has been happy to draw on Nasa's data archives but, at the same time, he wants to help to push the democratisation of space travel. "I want to show people that getting to space, and space access, should not be dependent on the federal government," he says.

Smith had partnered with Copenhagen Suborbitals (see p114], a Danish non-profit aerospace group working to send a manned craft into suborbital space on a (metaphorical) shoestring. But when the collaboration ended in mid 2014, shortly before a major altitude test, Smith and his team scrambled to find a helicopter that could reach 5,000 metres. The Mark II suit performed admirably and now the team is building a Mark III, and a balloon to carry it to 15,000 metres. "It's no fun to think about just buying a plane and flying up to 15,000 metres," he says. "That's not interesting to me. What's interesting is handling the technology, holding it, working with it. Trying to figure it out yourself."

Portland State Aerospace Society, USA

Sarah Sharp

Engineering professor Andrew Greenberg started the Portland State Aerospace Society (PSAS) as a student at Portland State University in 1998. The group's LV (launch vehicle) 2.0, a four-metre liquid-fuelled rocket, has been up to 4,785 metres, which could be a record among university groups in the US. The total cost of the project, not counting the time and effort: about $10,000. "One hundred kilometres is attainable by groups for under a couple of hundred thousand dollars," Greenberg says.

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The basic concept of liquid-fuelled engines hasn't changed much since Robert H Goddard's day, says engineer Nathan Bergey of PSAS. Much of the information from Nasa's early missions is now available online, although work that was done by subcontractors is still private. But advances in materials and technology mean that a certain amount of rethinking will always be involved. "There's still a lot of testing and blowing up engines," he says.

The term "good enough" doesn't apply to space flight, he adds. "There are no easy solutions, no corners you can cut. It takes every single gramme of performance just to get to orbit." Every piece of a spacecraft has to withstand extreme temperature fluctuations, mechanical stress and radiation. In 2005, an early model of the LV 2.0 hit the ground at 805kph after the nose-cone-ejection system failed.

The group's commitment to make all of its data available as open source, from schematics to software, raises an issue that has roots in the second world war: there is a fine line between rockets as research tools and rockets as weapons. The US government's International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), which forbids sharing anything potentially defence-related with foreigners without official authorisation, makes international collaboration difficult, bordering on the impossible.

ITAR is a particular concern for the open-source movement, Greenberg says, not least because what the law covers (or not) is hard to pin down. "As technology becomes more powerful, that becomes more grey," he says. "University groups weren't making their own GPS units when ITAR was written."

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Until someone builds a working space-lift, it will always take enormous amounts of energy simply to escape gravity. But, Greenberg says, "with current technologies it's only a couple of million dollars for a group like ours to [reach orbit]. Everybody can kind of smell this is on the verge of possibility."

The first hurdle is the largest, as science-fiction giant Robert Heinlein recognised: "Reach low earth orbit and you're halfway to anywhere in the solar system.

Delft Aerospace Rocket Engineering, the Netherlands

Delft Aerospace Rocket Engineering, the Netherlands

Casper Rila

"We went to space in the 60s, but only now is it possible to do it on a student budget," says Martin Olde of Delft Aerospace Rocket Engineering (DARE) at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. The student-run group, one of the most advanced of its kind in Europe, has about 130 members and a core launch crew of roughly 30, all bachelors- or master's-level students. In 2009, their Stratos I rocket soared to 12.55km over northern Sweden, breaking the European amateur rocketry altitude record by 2.41km. "We have quite liberal regulations in the Netherlands regarding propellants," Olde says. "Working with explosives holds back a lot of other groups." It also helps that parts such as aluminium tubes are now available online, and the prices for others, such as mechanical actuators [mechanisms that convert rotary motion into linear motion], have plunged. The rocket isn't even the most expensive part of the project, says Olde, who puts DARE's overall budget "in the [euros] six figures." A static motor test runs about €1,500 (£1,100), and the group's seven-metre Stratos II rocket, designed to reach 50km, required ten. Commercial launch sites -- a requirement throughout the continent because of population density -- typically charge €100,000 to €200,000 per launch.

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In 2014, DARE tried to launch the Stratos II from El Arenosillo, near Seville, Spain, but a tiny valve leak scuttled the attempt. It's a common problem, Olde says, and could have been much worse. "At least we didn't put the rocket on the beach in 2,000 pieces," he says. They hope to try again soon, and eventually to become the first student group to reach the Kármán line at 100km -- the edge of space, according to the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale -- with a rocket built entirely from scratch.

Compared to the ITAR restrictions that hinder groups such as PSAS, Dutch law has a "knowledge embargo" on certain engineering fields, including rocketry, meant to keep knowledge from falling into the hands of countries such as Iran and North Korea. The law specifically mentions the Stratos effort, but every DARE member still has to apply for a government exemption to work on the project.

SpaceIL, Israel

SpaceIL team leader Yariv Bash, photographed in the Judaean Desert, Israel, March 2015

Michael Fisch

The only serious non-profit contender for the Lunar XPRIZE has a back story worthy of a scrappy startup: the three Israeli engineers who founded SpaceIL originally connected on Facebook, sketched craft designs in a bar in Hebron and registered for the contest the day before it closed. Now, 30 full-time staff are working on what they hope will be the first Israeli spacecraft on the Moon. At one metre high and 40kg, the hexagonal craft would also be the smallest and lightest craft ever to land on Earth's only natural satellite.

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The compact design means every part serves a dual purpose whenever possible. After touchdown the propulsion system will use the remaining fuel to make a 500-metre "space hop", a mass-saving solution to fulfil the contest requirement. The same cameras that will transmit images back to Earth will also guide the craft during approach and touchdown using SLAM (simultaneous localisation and mapping) technology. (The 1.25-second radio delay between the Earth and the Moon means the lander will essentially have to autonavigate during this critical phase.) These specialised optical-navigation algorithms help robots, UAVs and self-driving cars make their way around unfamiliar environments, but this will be the first time such a system has been used in space.

Although the Moon is easier to land on than, say, a comet, it's still a rugged and dusty landscape covered with mountains and craters. That's one reason why SpaceIL is combing Nasa's Moon-landing records for tactical information, such as tables that show how much dust is kicked up at various engine cut-off altitudes. "Moon dust is [the] one specific subject that bothers us the most," says cofounder and team leader Yariv Bash. "Will it stick to our optics? How would [a] cloud of dust interact with our propulsion system and navigation sensors?"

SpaceIL's $40 million budget has come mainly from philanthropists, including $16.4 million from Sheldon Adelson, one of the world's richest men. The Israeli Space Agency kicked in $1.5 million to help to develop the propulsion system, and an Indiegogo campaign to raise $240,000 -- one dollar for every mile to the Moon -- surpassed its goal by over $40,000.

Being a non-profit is both a blessing and a curse, Bash says. Although SpaceIL doesn't have to worry about earning a profit, they do have to convince investors the project will have a lasting impact. That's why hundreds of volunteers are giving presentations on the project at schools across the country. The hope, Bash says, is to kick off an "Apollo effect" and inspire Israel's next generation of scientists and engineers, as Nasa did in the 60s and 70s. SpaceIL has even arranged sponsorship of the Israeli version of The Voice reality show. Every school presentation ends with a challenge, Bash says: once the SpaceIL lander wins the competition, "their mission is to build the next spaceship that will go to the Moon and bring our spaceship back to Earth."

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Copenhagen Suborbitals, Denmark

Jacob Larsen and the BPM-5 engine

Alastair Philip Wiper

In October 2008, Kristian von Bengtson, a Nasa contractor, met rocket enthusiast Peter Madsen at his home: an 18-metre submarine Madsen had designed and built. The group they founded has been working for six years on what is essentially a bootstrapped Project Mercury, the first such manned space programme.

Copenhagen Suborbitals (CS) now has 24 core members backed by some 1,100 supporters around the world. The group raises the bulk of its £12,500 monthly budget from online subscribers and it plans to publish nearly all of its data.

So far, they have tested three capsule configurations and launched three different rockets. One of these, the 9.38-metre Heat-1X, was the most powerful amateur rocket ever flown. A few seconds after lift-off, the craft pitched over into a 30° flight angle. Flight control shut the motors down at 1,402m. The rocket crashed and sank; the craft was recovered but heavily damaged. "We couldn't do this ten or 15 years ago," says CS's Mads Wilson. The abundance of smartphones means components such as embedded microprocessors and GPS units are now cheap and easy to find. The 11-metre Heat-2X rocket, successor to the Heat-1X, had three computer systems based on CSduino, a custom variant of the Arduino platform.

Why the past tense? During a static ignition test on August 16, a fuel leak caused the Heat-2X engine to catch fire. "To paraphrase Monty Python, it is an ex-rocket," Wilson jokes.

More than anything, CS owes its success to being able to connect with people around the world via its website and newsletters -- and Facebook. "If it wasn't for the internet then who would have ever heard of us, 40 geeks in Copenhagen trying to build our own rocket?" The team regularly receives advice and assistance from professional scientists free of charge -- as well as "five or ten" applications a week from would-be volunteers, some of whom are willing to move to Denmark at their own expense.

With the forced retirement of the Heat-2X engine, the group is reassessing. They are developing a smaller engine for more frequent tests, with sights on designing an engine almost twice as large as the 2X.

They're also debating whether to go with a spacesuit or simply a pressurised capsule. They're essentially the same thing, Wilson says, except a suit is more complicated, since it has to be wearable.

Team Indus, India

Dilip Chabria (left) and Rahul Narayan at the Sasken facility in Bangalore

Vijit Gupta

Of the 18 teams in the running for the Google Lunar XPRIZE, one of the most promising was founded by three IT engineers in India. Team Indus is riding a national wave of excitement over the September 2014 success of the Indian Space Research Organisation's Mars Orbiter Mission. The team's eclectic roster includes engineers, entrepreneurs and a 12-year-old maths prodigy.

Its Moon-landing plan starts with a dedicated launch aboard the same Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle used for the Mars mission. After a three-week flight, the 210kg lander will touch down in the basaltic plain of the Sinus Iridium, the "Bay of Rainbows", and release a 33kg rover that's roughly the size of an oven. The solar-powered rover will have a one-metre-high mast and four DC-powered wheels, two with independent steering. Like many teams in the competition, Team Indus plans to hand control of the rover over to school groups for 15 or 20 minutes at a time after it lands safely and it will be transmitting data to a live Google Hangout feed.

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Early in 2014, Team Indus was named one of five Lunar XPRIZE Milestone prize finalists. In December 2014, judges oversaw a series of tests, which included dropping a full-scale model of the lander 16 times from one metre to test its stability. Another test involved driving a rover prototype around a 25m2 simulated lunar landscape. In January, the team was one of three to win a $1m Milestone prize to help fund the launch.

Being based in Bangalore, the Silicon Valley of India, is a positive, says Rahul Narayan, one of Team Indus's founders. "There's always a cost advantage in being the only team from a country," he adds. So does having one of the world's largest government space agencies to draw from -- especially one that crashed a probe into the Moon (on purpose) in 2008.

Launch costs will account for two thirds of the estimated $35 million budget, which is small enough to raise experienced eyebrows, Narayan says. "People either love us or they ask what we're smoking." They are raising funds through a combination of sponsorships, payload sales, crowdfunding and angel investors but, Narayan laughs, "we're nowhere near close".

Julian Smith is the author of 'Smokejumper: A Memoir by One of America's Most Select Airborne Firefighters' (William Morrow), out on September 24

This article was first published in the June 2015 issue of WIRED magazine